Rogue
Soprano
He
trolleys in lamenting his book-bag—shakes,
drops
the innumerable pictographs, splays
them,
conking the floor like paralytic weights,
as
if our Maine bungalow were
his
own private—“Mr. Sipe keeps telling our whole
grade
‘There’s
a rogue soprano hiding out in the altos.’”
He
smiles—
There
is a certain hokiness when my son imitates
his
teachers—an affection not lost on either party.
He
is vamping now . . . .
A
tuft of auburn hair will not find
agency
(his head blossoming, rooting, inside and out).
I
coil the curl with my fingertips. He is just now
13.
He no longer woos me.
His
impertinence startles him
and
I stow his brief attentiveness like a
Krugerrand,
fatuously, into my pocket.
Soon
his voice, too, will be hijacked by the gods
and
devils of arduous hormones. For now,
a
wanton partition.
Richard
Lee Zuras was born and raised in Virginia, and earned his BA at George Mason
University. He earned his MFA as the McNeese Fellow under the auspices of
Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, before doing Ph.D. work in North
Dakota under the late poet Jay Meek. His work has been published in South Dakota Review, Weber Studies, Passages
North, Confrontation, Red Rock Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Muddy,
Xavier Review, Story Quarterly, Confrontation, Laurel Review, Lake Effect,
Jabberwock Review, and elsewhere. He has held scholarships at Bread Loaf
and Wesleyan University, and has garnered a Yemassee Award. Currently, Richard is
Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, where
he lives with his wife, two sons, and a red Siberian Husky.
